Three panel sessions took place during the afternoon, topics included; OTT Challenging the Traditional Broadcast Landscape, Premium Sports and 4K, UHD and beyond. Futuresource also shared their ground breaking research into how studios are driving digital ownership, the relationship between hardware and content and consumer insights from its latest wave of Living with Digital research.

Keynote speaker George Barrios, WWE, shared his experiences of the new WWE Network commenting that the WWE network has 1.3m Global subscribers ,90% customer satisfaction with 53.4 hours of viewing per home.

Futuresource analyst Carl Hibbert led an interesting panel session called 'OTT Challenging the Traditional Broadcast Landscape' with Simon McGrath, General Manager of thePlatform, Matt Rennie, Managing Director of The Box Plus Network, Matthew Huntington, CTO of Freesat and Jakob Mejlhede Andersen, Executive VP of Programming and Content Development at Modern Times Group. Simon McGrath stated that 'the UK is aggressive and fast moving in terms of new content services', they all concluded that Pay TV operators are managing to fend off OTT or embrace it.

Charles Dawes, Senior Director of Product Marketing, Rovi Corp took us down memory lane from the TV guide to the EPG to the new graph based technology which is now enabling the Rovi transition to dynamic metadata. He believes that multiplatform personalization is the way forward with '63% of users spending over 10 minutes searching for content today'.

The 'Premium Sports' panel led by Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner, comprised of David Kerr, Managing Director Eurosports, Alex Chamberlen, Managing Director Omnigon, David Gibbs, Director Sky Sports Digital and Ivan Farneti, COO Glory World Sports. One key message to take from this session is that the clear line between digital and TV is obviously now blurring, Gibbs stating that '20% of Sky's live sports events are now viewed on the Sky Go platform'.

David Sidebottom presented fascinating Futuresource research on how the studios are managing their business in the light of the transition to digital, 39% of Global video revenues will be subscription VOD by 2018.

The final panel session of the day '4K, UHD and Beyond' held by Jack Wetherill, Senior Market Analyst Futuresource involved Andy Quested, Head of HD and UHD BBC, Simon Gauntlett, CTO DTG and Chris Johns, Chief Engineer Broadcast Strategy, Sky. The general consensus with the panel was that 4K and UHD TV are 'not like the 3D fiasco' stated Andy Quested. At the moment there are multiple standards for TVs, they all agreed that a new standard needs to arranged, a challenge they have set themselves for the coming year.

Matt Stagg, EE gave a fascinating presentation about the challenges and opportunities EE faces with TV on the go. Stagg said "all mobile operators need to separate video streaming from mobile data and ultimately charge for duration and not MB/GB".

Finally Sony and Dolby gave us a glimpse into the future with virtual reality demos and presentations of their latest products. Panasonic demonstrated their P2 cast solutions, a cloud based news production system that takes full advantage of the network features of the P2HD camcorders with AVC-ULTRA recording.

Notes:

Futuresource Consulting is a specialist research and knowledge-based consulting company, providing organisations with insight into consumer electronics, digital imaging, entertainment media, broadcast, storage media, education technology and IT. With a heritage stretching back to the 1980s, the company delivers in-depth analysis and forecasts on a global scale, advising on strategic positioning, market trends, competitive forces and technological developments. www.futuresource-consulting.com

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